Today, I went to a lecture at MfA where one of the three Common Core Lead-Authors–Jason Zimba–spoke about his work and the development of the CCSS. He was a great speaker, very open and honest, and I really enjoyed hearing his point of view. Some quick take aways for me:

Emphasis should be increased but equally so among three main parts: conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and application.

Much of the Geometry we teach (and the Geo standards) are of very low importance to most post secondary instructors.

Emphasis for college instructors is on deep algebraic understanding and fluency/skill.

Perhaps Geo should be a place where algebra is reinforced.

Conceptual understanding problem is a “hold your hands in your lap and think for a second” type problem.

Though the CCSS can seem like they are covering a lot of topics, one of the goals was to see the connectedness. For instance: Pythagorean Theorem, Equation of a Circle, Distance Formula, Trig Identity…all versions of the same thing. Less memorization, more repetition of the same idea.

When schools, cities or states try to add details to the standards, we should “Keep Calm and Go to the Standards”